Category Archives: Women’s Activism

A Female Head of State? What’s Your Point, Honey?

South face of the White House.

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Prepping Women for the White House – International Museum of Women.

What’s Your Point, Honey? Promotes Not One, But Many Women Leaders

Image Borgman (c) 2007 The Cincinnati Enquirer. Used by permission of Universal Press Syndicate

Nearly 100 years after universal suffrage, U.S. women have yet to hold the highest office in the land. Currently, they make up 18 percent of governors, 16 percent of senators and 16 percent of representatives. What’s being done to change these statistics? Filmmakers Amy Sewell and Susan Toffler confront this question head on in their upbeat feminist documentary, What’s Your Point, Honey? Through candid and formal interviews with pre-teens, prominent women leaders and everyone in between, the directors have created a film about and for young women who dream of doing great things.

AdvancingWomen.com is proud to support all young women…. and, in fact, all mature women as well,  who dream of doing great things.  We look forward to seeing one of them sworn in as President of the United States one day.

But as the film’s subtitle, “It’s not about one…” reminds us, it’s not just about getting one woman to the top position, but shifting the political climate so that, by the time these young girls are of eligible running age, it will “be so normal for women to run that we’ll never look back.”

To read more on the making of this film go to

Prepping Women for the White House – International Museum of Women.

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Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices from a New Generation of Women

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Advancing Women In Leadership Journal » Book Review: Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices from a New Generation of Women.

“Harvard graduate student, Paula Goldman, stumbled across an idea one morning – to send an Internet question out to the world “What defines your generation of women?” The idea gathered pace. Out of some 3,000 responses, the international editorial team picked 105 submissions from women living in 57 countries, including some well-known activists, artists, athletes, writers, musicians, photographers, and community organizers.

The resulting book, Imagining Ourselves‘ essential underlying communication platform is the Internet – the invitation to contribute to the book was sent out via the Internet, and the responses apparently were also compiled over the Internet – it is a collection of digital conversations. The book also complements a virtual web-based “living” conversation – as the International Museum of Women’s President invites readers, “The Imagining Ourselves project combines this inspiring anthology with an online exhibit and gathering place where you can participate in conversations about topics important to you … at the International Museum of Women’s website

The book’s contributors share a common profile. They are middle to upper middle class, and in some cases, members of the ruling elite. The latter include Queen Rania of Jordan, Karenna Gore Schiff (Al Gore’s daughter) and Nurual Izzah Anway, (daughter of Malaysia’s former Deputy Prime Minister). The majority of the contributors have had access to superior education, technology, and, by extension, the global market. These are women with a high degree of mobility, freedom to express, and ability to articulate their opinions and issues.

Reading through the contributions, it is apparent that the digital world is impacting women’s observations about and interactions with the world around them. Yee-Ming Tan, for instance, pursues a conventional corporate career following her studies in Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. After her travels in Tibet she reflects that the main difference between women of the Tibetan community and her is “the digital distance”. Unlike Tibetan women who operate within their immediate environs, her support network is “thousands of miles away, I am in contact via the telephone, the Internet – with my sister in Paris, my friend in New York and my Mum in Malaysia”, she writes, “we are connected to our wider support group digitally over a great distance”.

Jess Loseby – an English artist uses the Internet as her main medium. She works on both small intimate online installations and large-scale digital projections and video. Jess is wheel chair bound, a mother of three and the Internet is an important source of information and inspiration for her artistic work. Pireeni Sundaralingam, born in Sri Lanka, educated at Oxford and living in the US, says, in reference to the Sri Lankan civil war, “thanks to advances in communication technology – there has never been such a chance for us to grasp, at a grassroots level, the similarities of our respective struggles and to build bridges between all our struggling communities.”

The author of this book review, Nidhi Tandon, laments the clear disparity in incomes between those in the West and those in emerging nations.  The income disparity and the digital divide have a clear impact on which women’s stories come to be told. Also, and perhaps as a result, the author notes:

“I was missing any critical references to women and their relationships with earth, water, resources and energy. A couple of lone voices from Bolivia and Micronesia, celebrated community, traditional wisdom, seeds, plants, food and biological diversity itself. This may have been one of the downsides of relying entirely on the Internet as a source of “diversity” of women’s stories.

This book reminds me of Women in the Material World, a book published ten years ago by the Sierra Club, which portrayed media, culture and consciousness through the eyes of women in their contexts across the world. The 256-page photojournalist book captured the myriad lives of women around the world through unfiltered lens, displaying significant material disparities among women across the world. Ten years later, Imagining Ourselves is published, this time a direct expression by the contributors themselves – and through the particular lens of literate and digitally connected women.”

Paula Goldman, Director of Imagining Ourselves

For the full review go to Advancing Women In Leadership Journal » Book Review: Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices from a New Generation of Women.

For more go to Advancing Women In Leadership Journal

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Where Feminism, Copyright Law and This Interminable Election Intersect

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Feminist Law Professors » Blog Archive » Where Feminism, Copyright Law and This Interminable Election Intersect.

AdvancingWomen.com thinks the point the original New Yorker cover meant to make was that even sophisticated, urbane and worldly New Yorkers….. or particularly sophisticated, urbane and worldly New Yorkers…. could be insular and parochial when it comes to viewing the rest of the country.  The so called “fly over” area of middle America..states like Kansas and Nebraska, are often heaped with particular scorn. And if the elite, entrenched establishment of the Eastern seaboard think of Kansas City as out of the hub bub, bright lights, fashion forward, deep thinking, heavy weight pontificating and intellectual clarity of the East, what then of Alaska?  Must be a wolverine and moose infested, vast frozen tundra of backwoodsmen and women, “clinging to their guns and religion”, and as Al Gore has demonstrated in his slides and film, about to slip into the watery nether world of the Bering Straits, that slim sliver of maritime border between the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific, between the U.S. and Russia, which Palin can see from her window.

One has to wonder if that same parochial, condescending perspective doesn’t affect some of the media and the talking heads who appear to view Sarah Palin as a “country bumpkin”, illiterate about global geo-politics and not nearly savvy enough to climb on to the world stage.  One has to wonder how all these brainy, politically savvy, white male politicians, who definitely fit into Washington D.C., managed to get us into two simultaneous wars, a financial and credit meltdown and mortgage crisis all of which are rattling the world markets.  It doesn’t seem the bar is set that high that Sarah Palin should be viewed quite so harshly.  Perhaps if she has less hubris she would do less and therefore foul up less than some who have been in power for decades, if not generations.

Where Feminism, Copyright Law and This Interminable Election Intersect

Above is a recent New Yorker cover mocking Sarah Palin. The drawing is a parody of one of the New Yorker’s most famous covers:

It was drawn by the late Saul Steinberg, and titled “View of the World from 9th Avenue, 1976“:

For more posts go to Feminist Law Professors

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“Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated”

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Feminist Law Professors » Blog Archive » Inverview With Congressional Rep. Carolyn Maloney About Her New Book, “Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated”.

This is exactly the kind of coming together and collaboration of women’s communities of interest that AdvancingWomen.com has been talking about and, hopefully, encouraging.

Part one here. Part two here.

In this instance, Feminist Law Professors and The New Agenda are focusing on the same themes found in “Rumours of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated” and reflected in this Interview With Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney by MadamaB, Crossposted at The Confluence and MadamaB’s own blog

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney is described by author, MadamaB, as a “gracious, intelligent, fiery and fabulous feminist.” Among the many points Congressman Maloney makes is that real progress will come “when there is a critical mass of women in government. Once 30% of our representatives are women ( Ed. some say 50%) , women’s issues begin to be addressed. The United States is nowhere near that critical mass yet.”

What is important, in the context of women’s emerging communities on the Net, is not the specific point a women’s activist makes, but the fact that she is taking a pro-woman stand in a society where there is a systemic bias which diminishes women and results in limiting their progress.  What is significant in this instance is that Feminist Law Professors , The New Agenda, The Confluence and MadamaB’s own blog have all come together on the Net to reinforce each other’s perspective on the themes in Maloney’s book.

AdvancingWomen.com‘s position is that “it is important that a meaningful part of content on the Net be shaped and produced by women and offer new paradigms to support women’s advancement…. Our first task is to foster a sense of inclusive community among women’s groups with many different agendas and ideologies because that is the catalyst which will drive open communication among them and form the foundation for both networking, and its further evolution into a support system….
To achieve women’s advancement in many areas – business, law, politics, academia –  we need a critical mass of women and women’s organizations to share their knowledge and strategies.”

When AdvancingWomen.com sees women’s groups like Feminist Law Professors , The New Agenda, The Confluence and MadamaB come together to share their knowledge and strategy, we feel very encouraged that the first steps towards that synergistic nexus of women’s communities on the Net has been taken and its evolution in growth and influence has begun.

When we look at the tools women have created or managed on the Net, a common theme runs through them: “Tina Sharkey at Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ) BabyCenter ( networking and sharing information about child care and child raising); Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr (photo sharing); Mena Trott, co-founder and president of blogging powerhouse Six Apart ( connecting and communication through blogging); and Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning, which lets users build their own social networks ( do it yourself, customized social networking)”.  In one way or another, all these women have addressed the technical “how to” part of the equation of women’s communicating and networking on the Net.  Other groups, many just now forming, are driven by the need to fill this new engine for thought and dialogue with their own passion, to level the playing field for themselves and other women.

In the beginning,  many purposeful and committed women may have found themselves a bit put off by the jarring disconnect of the techie culture, in contrast with their own more reflective styles. Very young men in tight T shirts with screaming logos or rebellious, clever or obscure quotations, slumped in bean bag chairs for an all night “hackathon” until some got leg burns from their lap tops, amid crumpled, empty pizza boxes, crushed Red Bull cans and blaring music pulsating through a giant open space, frequently a loft or run down office. Was there a flash of genius there?  Definitely, sometimes.  Mostly they could have produced the same work from 9 to 5 but the crazy hours and adrenalin high were all part of the exuberant experience for them.

For equally driven women, either in their corner office, having fought tooth and nail to get there, or who might have met at Starbucks for a latte or a caramel frappe, or be sipping oolong tea on their deck or multi-tasking in their home office, Blackberry in one hand, baby on a hip, stepping over the tennis shoes of their son, roughly the same age as the founders of some of the new Net companies like Facebook….there may have been a sense that they didn’t belong in this new Net frontier.  Not that the wonderboys were swinging open any doors for them.  But women have long ago learned no one is swinging open any doors for them.  If women want to walk into the tech scene and become powerhouses on the Net, we have to step up, open our own doors and “make the path by walking on it.”

AdvancingWomen.com has no doubt that women will go for it and stake our own claim to our sphere in the Networked world, particularly now that the social networking era with all of its new, automated tools is upon us. We have a hunch that “our” Net, the “women’s communities’ Net” will be different.  It will be less about technical wizardry…..not that we don’t appreciate every ounce of that as it makes our work easier….give us those WordPress plug ins by the barrel full; it will be more about solving deep rooted problems woman have faced.  It will be less about reaching out for new Net frontiers to conquer, than working together to reshape attitudes and stereotypes from the past that have prevented us from crossing old frontiers.

This time, we don’t have to ask permission to join the “old boys’ game”.  ( Many of the old boys got “kicked under the bus” by the wonderboys anyway.)  This time we have the tools and the ability to use the Net to route around the existing power structure, bypass the gate keepers, and ignore the often condescening “talking heads”  to speak directly to each other, each from our own community of interest reaching out to like-minded others.

Also see:

Community on the Net – The Platform To Network, The Power to Mentor

Don’t Cry for Us, Silicon Valley

WIPP Applauds Letter by Women Senators Opposing SBA’s Proposed Rule on Women Procurement Programs

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WIPP Applauds Letter by Women Senators Opposing SBA’s Proposed Rule on Women Procurement Programs – International Business Times -.

AdvancingWomen.com would like to recognize and honor the 16 women senators who stood up and attempted to level the playing field for women in business.

“Women Impacting Public Policy(WIPP), the nation’s largest bipartisan women business organization, applaudsthe Senate’s 16 female members for their opposition to the SBA’s proposedwomen’s procurement program rule.

The letter stated, “The SBA’s proposed rule has two pivotal flaws whichvhinder it from functioning as Congress originally intended. First, theproposed rule identifies merely four business industries, out of roughly 140,in which women-owned small businesses are under-represented and eligible forset-asides … Second, for the SBA’s proposed rule to be implemented,individual Federal agencies must first publicly admit to a history of genderdiscrimination.”

The letter also says that, despite comprising a third of the nation’s small businesses, women entrepreneurs only received 3.4 percent of federalcontracting dollars in 2006. It continues by stating Congress established thewomen’s procurement program in 2000 to help address the underrepresentation ofwomen entrepreneurs in the government marketplace. “Now, over seven years later, the SBA produced a fundamentally flawed proposed rule in itsinsufficient attempt to implement the women’s program.”

Furthermore, the letter points to recent actions taken by the SenateAppropriations Committee prohibiting the SBA from funding implementation ofthe proposed rule.

( AdvancingWomen.com salutes the following women Senators for standing up for women:)
Also showing their support for women-owned small businesses were Sens. KayBailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Susan Collins (R-Maine, Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Blanch Lincoln (D-Ark.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Debbie Stabenow (R-Mich.).”

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Sally Krawcheck: Is it a Woman Thing? | Business Pundit

Sally Krawcheck: Is it a Woman Thing? | Business Pundit.

Here is a blog we are absolutely aching to get some comments on from women with different perspectives. Particularly such statements as :

“I don’t understand where women stand anymore. ’70s-style feminism is clearly defined in my mind, but it’s been a long time since then. What do women want most these days? Symbolic strength? A voice from a sister? Traditional roles?

Anyone?

From Conde Nast Portfolio:

Citigroup’s Sallie Krawcheck, one of the highest-profile women on Wall Street, will step down, according to the Wall Street Journal. She heads Citigroup’s wealth-management unit, which is being moved into the bank’s institutional group as a part of a broad restructuring.

Krawcheck was recruited by former chief executive Sandy Weill in 2002 to run the Smith Barney business. She rose to become the bank’s chief financial officer for three years until 2007, when she was moved to the head of Citi’s wealth-management business as part of an overhaul of the bank’s top ranks.

This is just the latest in a string of senior-ranking female departures on Wall Street. Last November, Zoe Cruz was asked to resign from her post as co-president of Morgan Stanley after the department she oversaw made a series of disastrous subprime trades.

And then in June, Lehman fired its chief financial officer Erin Callan after investors raised questions about the bank’s financial statements. Lehman’s bankruptcy filing early last week is seen by some as vindication for Callan.

Journalist Megan Barnett wisely points out that while investment banks recently fired several high-ranking women, the fact remains that there aren’t many investment banks left, either.

Does Krawcheck’s layoff mean anything for the women’s movement? Does it mean anything at all?

Looking at this from a women’s interest perspective, the moral of the story is that Wall Street will fire executives when in a pinch, whether they’re female or not. The message to women is that they, too, can become Mistresses of the Universe. Victory! Except that women, too, can be fired at the turn of the market. Darn.

There’s so much contradictory news circulating through the Internet today that I can’t make sense of what women’s interest means anymore:

1) Men with egalitarian attitudes about the role of women in society earn significantly less on average than men who hold more traditional views about women’s place in the world, according to a study being reported today. (Washington Post)

Moral: Empirical evidence has shown that men who know their place, and a woman’s place, make more money.

Message: Real men

make more money than sissy-boys. Feminist egalitarianism victimizes men. Here’s the math to prove it.

2) A quote from Norla, a small-town American woman, on voting for Sarah Palin: “…if not [Palin], it’s just the old-boys network again.” Palin’s small-town credentials appeal to Norla, although she has questions about Palin’s experience. “But what the heck? A lot of people didn’t have experience before they got in, and she’s got a lot of good common sense.” (Salon)

Moral: This small-town woman thinks Palin, by virtue of being a woman, cannot possibly also be part of the old boys’ network. Gender matters more than experience or connections.

Message: You’re pro-woman if you vote for a woman. Any woman. Regardless of whether you agree with her viewpoints or not.

3) (Republican pollster Kellyanne) Conway said more women will vote than men this fall – as has happened in every presidential election since 1964 – and will be a deciding factor. Less than two months ago, Mr. McCain was trailing Mr. Obama significantly among women, and “now they are now pretty much neck and neck.” (Dallas Morning News)

Moral: Women have the power to sway the elections.

Question: Are you more pro-woman if you vote for a woman, in the flesh, or a man whom you believe stands for women more than the actual woman?

I don’t understand where women stand anymore. ’70s-style feminism is clearly defined in my mind, but it’s been a long time since then. What do women want most these days? Symbolic strength? A voice from a sister? Traditional roles?

Anyone? ”

Please send us your perspective, your thoughts and feedback.


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BlogTalkRadio interview with Amy Siskind : The New Agenda

BlogTalkRadio interview with Amy Siskind : The New Agenda.

We thought you might want to hear more from the co-founder of The New Agenda., a new non-partisan group for women’s rights.

Amy Siskind, co-founder of The New Agenda

Amy Siskind, co-founder of The New Agenda

“On September 10 our own Amy Siskind was the guest on Tommy Christopher’s Unusable Signal on BlogTalkRadio.
Amy talked with co-hosts Tommy Christopher and Tom Fitzsimmons about the founding of  The New Agenda and explained the group’s non-partisan mission and goals.

We’ve excerpted a few snippets from the hour-long interview to share here. Just click on each link to transform it into a tiny little in-line mp3 player” — to listen, go to The New Agenda.

( Disclosure – I am also a co-founder of The New Agenda, a group characterized as a “big tent”, with members having a whole range of different idealogies but joined in their commitment to women’s rights.  So I guess it would be fair to say, like all members of The New Agenda, I am a committed supporter of women’s rights and the goal of advancing women…. as if that weren’t perfectly clear to all who follow AdvancingWomen.com and this blog.  However, the reason I will be following and reporting on The New Agenda from time to time, is because the group has formed and taken a bold, activist and leadership role in protecting and advancing women’s rights in multliple venues and on many levels. For women everywhere, this should be extremely newsworthy and relevant to their lives.   If you have comments or feedback, agree or disagree, we invite you to share your thoughts )

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Lynette Long: NEW AGENDA TARGETS CHRIS MATTHEWS FROM LA TIMES

Lynette Long: NEW AGENDA TARGETS CHRIS MATTHEWS FROM LA TIMES.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews remains in the bull’s eye for new women’s group

Forget the battle for the White House — here’s a campaign that’s really heating up: the bid by a new women’s group to hold Chris Matthews accountable for what it asserts is “misogynistic journalism” practiced by the voluble MSNBC political pundit.

The New Agenda, a nonpartisan organization promoting women’s rights, today sent a letter to NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker asking for a meeting to discuss Matthews’ attitude toward women.

Amy Siskind, one of the group’s founders, said in an interview it wants Matthews (at right, with Ron Reagan behind him) to issue a public apology and change his on-air behavior. Absent that, he needs to be fired, she said…

The group’s letter applauded the recent decision by MSNBC to remove Matthews and Keith Olbermann from prominent roles anchoring political events, but said more action is needed.

“MSNBC can regain its reputation as a respectable news organization by taking more appropriate action against Chris Matthews,” the letter said. “If Matthews were an employee in a Fortune 500 company, he would have been fired for sexual harassment long ago. Instead, MSNBC peddled misogynistic journalism to the American public.”

Compiling a list of actions that it deemed offensive, The New Agenda wrote that the “Hardball” host a couple of years asked if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would “castrate” a fellow Democrat with whom she had feuded, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland.

The letter also faults Matthews for likening Hillary Clinton, during the Democratic primary campaign, to Nurse Ratched, the power-mad character from Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

“The historic candidacies of both Hillary Clinton and [Republican vice presidential nominee] Sarah Palin have brought to light for all Americans the rampant sexism in the media,” the letter said.

For the complete post go to Lynette Long: NEW AGENDA TARGETS CHRIS MATTHEWS FROM LA TIMES.

The Big Tent – by Dr. Violet Socks

The Big Tent – Reclusive Leftist » Blog Archive » .

In her explanation of “The Big Tent”, which is how leader Amy Siskind characterized “The New Agenda”, Violet Socks says, in part:

“Imagine a big lawn party with lots of little booths and kiosks staffed by different groups. This lawn party is Feminism. Over in one rather large booth we have the liberal feminists; they’re wearing power suits and carrying Blackberries. In another part of the lawn the cultural feminists are holding court in their Earth Mother skirts, with some womyn-only music playing on the speakers.

In the middle of the lawn is a big blue tent with a sign saying, “The New Agenda.” This is the tent where women from all the different booths and kiosks gather to work on the issues they agree on — which, as we all know, is not every issue. They don’t stop being themselves when they go to The New Agenda tent, and they don’t abandon their beliefs. They just put aside their differences long enough to talk about the things they do agree on.

Pro-choice women will never agree with pro-life women on abortion, but they do agree on equal pay and healthcare and domestic violence. In The New Agenda tent, those are the things they can work on together. The Hothead Paisan lesbians and the feminists-for-Christ probably won’t be joining each other’s social clubs anytime soon, but in The New Agenda tent they can put their heads together to figure out how to combat sexism in the media.

The idea is to create a place where we can join forces on the many issues that unite us, instead of remaining always divided by the issues that separate us.”

For more of Dr. Socks post, go to

The Big Tent – Reclusive Leftist » Blog Archive » .